


Battle Scars

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Battle Scars, Family, Father & Son - Freeform, Gen, Knight & Squire, Loss, Maiming, War, battle trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 11:36:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15290694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Gareth comes to terms with the loss of his finger. Set long before the first Song of the Lioness book.





	Battle Scars

Battle Scar

In his dreams, Gareth was whole again. He still was soaked in sweat and tasted blood—his own or someone else’s, he could never be certain and didn’t want to know to preserve what remained of his sanity—as he fought in the Battle of Joyous Forest that to him was a misnomer since it would always be more of a cause for lamentation than celebration, but this time his sword swung swift and true. This time, his sword cleaved the Gallan knight’s head from his shoulders before the Gallan could slice off his finger. This time, his sword didn’t slip from his remaining fingers in shock and pain. This time, he didn’t need a burly boy—who had to have been no older than eighteen—of common stock to surge forward from the line of infantry and save him from the Gallan knight’s mortal blow. 

His dreams were his chance to rewrite history, and he took full advantage of the opportunity to do everything right in his dreams as he had failed to do in life. In the brief intervals between his dreams then the healers tended to him, he could hear though not respond in his delirious state that many of the other injured were prone to nightmares they awoke from screaming and sweating buckets. Gareth’s nightmares weren’t like theirs even if the healers might have thought so because his nightmares didn’t come when he was asleep. In his sleep, he was the perfect squire who did everything right and never lost a finger to teach him to never lower his guard. It was when he was awake to see—each time a fresh agony that pierced him like a spear to the heart—that a finger on his left hand was missing that the nightmares would hit him. 

Salt would sting his eyes, and he would have to blink fiercely to stop any tears sneaking out that would add to his disgrace. His movements—once so smooth and sure—were now slow as a snail’s from having to learn how to live without a finger he had always taken for granted. Phantom pain tingled in a finger that was no longer part of him, and his brain kept sending orders to a finger that would never receive them. Neither his mind nor his body had adjusted to his loss. The healers assured him that was to be expected and urged him to rest. 

It was impossible to rest when his father, the general that was second in command only to King Jasson on this campaign, marched (Duke Gawain of Naxen marched everywhere, even a miserable makeshift army hospital) into Gareth’s room and stood, lips thin and palms planted on his hips, beside Gareth’s lumpy cot. 

Gareth was grateful that his rank as a duke’s son and the king’s squire was apparently sufficient to secure him a private chamber when his father observed, cold and hard as the granite in the Scanran mountains, “I see you’re awake though still lying about like a cripple, son.” 

“I am a cripple, Father.” Gareth wiggled his fingers to emphasize the one that was forever lost. Of course Father would interpret his maiming as an insult to the family honor, a weakness that must be despised and decried. He would never offer any sympathy or solace in the moment where Gareth most craved such support. 

“Never say that.” Father seized Gareth’s ear and shook it so forcefully that Gareth almost feared it would peel off, leaving him with an absent ear to match his missing finger. As Gareth bit back a somewhat sarcastic request for his father to release his ear as he might need it again someday as it seemed likely to only provoke further assault, Father hissed like a menaced serpent, “You’re the king’s squire only because he thinks you’re the best fighter—the strongest swordsman—among your peers. Strength is all that matters to His Majesty, who rejects all forms of weakness as befits a man of his might. His Majesty will have less use for a crippled squire than he will for a dull blade. He’ll be visiting you soon, he tells me. I suggest you use the time before his arrival to figure out a way to convince him you’re not a cripple but strong as ever or you won’t be in his service much longer. I imagine he would be so generous as to call it an honorable discharge from duty, but it would still be a disgrace—not just to you but to our family name. Understand?” 

“Yes, sir.” Gareth felt as if he had been force-fed a spoonful of the blood-spattered dirt of Joyous Forest. He remembered how King Jasson, despite the fact that he was the king’s godsson, had only taken an interest in him once he had proven on the practice courts that he was the most promising of the pages. That was what prompted King Jasson to extend him the honor of asking him to serve as his squire, but an honor bestowed could be revoked in an eye blink by a mercurial monarch as Father pointed out with all the sensitivity of a mace to an unarmored neck. “I’ll be very persuasive about how strong I still am despite my maiming.” 

“Don’t use that word with His Majesty either.” With a final harsh twist of Gareth’s ear, Father relinquished his grip on it and strode over to the door, firing like an arrow over his shoulder as he departed, “Try not to disappoint the family again, Gareth, or I might have to disown you.” 

Father disappeared down the hallway of the house the army had claimed (as it had so much of the disputed territory along the Gallan border) as a hospital for the wounded before Gareth could stumble out a subdued “Yes, Father.” 

With his father out of earshot, Gareth risked a ragged sigh. Father frequently threatened disownment when Gareth failed to meet his exacting standards, which happened too much for Gareth’s liking and would probably occur more often with Father seeing him as a cripple. Gareth suspected that he would already have been disowned to beg on streets where he would be spat upon if he weren’t his father’s only surviving son. 

Feeling as if he didn’t belong anywhere—an outcast to be stoned even by his own father—he pushed himself of bed with the hand that had four fingers to prove that it was powerful as the one with five. Then he walked down the corridor to rid himself of his sensation of dislocation—of separation from family—and found himself in a long room crowded with bandaged commoners. 

Some cried, some prayed, some begged for the mothers who had brought them bleeding into the world, and some cursed the gods for cruelty but the ones who rattled Gareth the most were the silent ones. Recognizing the face of the boy who had saved his life at Joyous Forest, he paused before his rescuer’s cot and proffered a hand for shaking, saying the first thing that entered his mind, “I’m Gareth of Naxen. I would know the name of the person who saved my life.” 

“Coram Smythesson.” Coram didn’t seem intimidated by touching the hand of a noble but clutched it firmly with his own. “From Trebond, but I only did me duty savin’ yer life. Yer nobility. Yer life is worth more than mine.” 

“Did you train as a smith?” Gareth arched an eyebrow. He had learned all the occupational surnames associated with commoners who practiced particular trades. Smithing was a valuable craft that earned more coin than soldiering. It was rare as digging up a diamond in a dungheap to find a lad trained in the trade swinging a sword instead of forging it. 

“Aye, but His Majesty rose the levy of men my lord was expected to provide his army this year, so my lord decided that I’d be of more service as a soldier than a smith.” Coram shrugged as if to say that how he had ended up on the battlefield was beyond his control, a destiny determined by those on a far higher rung of the social ladder. 

Gareth knew that the king was quick to increase the levies of men nobles were expected to provide so that he would be guaranteed troops of sufficient size for unceasing conquest. Any nobles who protested were punished with even steeper levies to quell them into silence. Gareth had registered the complaints of the nobility as background noise but never considered the effects of the king’s policy on the young men throughout the realm dragged from their fields and forges to do their duty and perhaps die at war. 

He might have stared if Father hadn’t schooled him since birth in the belief that gawking was beneath one of his bloodline. At last he managed to answer, “Come to Naxen if you ever want for work as a soldier or a smith. I’ll always remember the name of someone who saved my life.” 

He certainly put a high price on his life, and he suspected that Father did too though he would never admit to that for fear of seeming too soft when strength was the only virtue he prized. 

Coram looked as if he were about to attempt a painful bow that would have exacerbated his injuries, but, before he could do so, a healer bustled up to Gareth, scolding as she shooed him back to his room, “Begone with you. If the king catches me allowing his squire to roam before he’s patched up properly, he’ll have my head on a spike.” 

Gareth was tempted to reply wryly that it was more likely the king would have his head for being injured in the first place but clamped his mouth shut when it dawned on him that could be deemed sedition at best and treason at worst. Both were even better ways than injury to be beheaded by the fearsome King Jasson. 

Obediently Gareth retreated to his bedroom. He hadn’t been there long when his knightmaster’s shadow darkened the doorway. With King Jasson looming above him, Gareth began to rise from his cot to bow, but King Jasson gave a brusque gesture to indicate that he should stay where he was. 

“Your finger…” Towering over Gareth, King Jasson trailed off, glaring down at the empty space where once a finger had been. 

“I can fight without it, Your Majesty.” Gareth hastened to respond to the unfinished question, daring to interrupt his king though it was an offense he had seen many backhanded for committing. “It’ll take some adjusting to, there’s no denying that, but once I’ve made the necessary changes, those differences might work to my advantage as unpredictable factors that could catch opponents on their heels. Surprise can be a mighty ally.” 

“I know you can fight without it, and you must.” King Jasson’s knuckles rapped against the bandage that couldn’t conceal the void that had once been Gareth’s finger. “Think of it as nothing more than a battle scar. Everyone has battle scars. Only the weak are crippled by them, but we aren’t weak, so we embrace ours with pride. Battle scars only prove how strong we are to any who are foolish enough to doubt us, don’t they, lad?” 

“Yes, sire.” Gareth nodded, absorbing the advice and waiting for the test of how well he had mastered the stern lesson that would inevitably follow as night chased day from the horizon since with his knightmaster there was always a test whether of strength, loyalty, or obedience. 

“I had a glove made for you.” King Jasson tossed a glove of supple but firm leather cut with a left hand with only four fingers onto Gareth’s knee. “You may wear it if you wish to hide your injury.” 

It was a clever test, Gareth noted. To refuse the glove would be to reject the kindness of a king, but to admit to a desire to conceal his missing finger would be tantamount to stating his intention to hide what his knightmaster had instructed him to wear with pride as a battle scar. To King Jasson, battle scars were badges of honor not be tucked into obscurity. 

“I thank you for the glove, Your Majesty, and I’d be honored to wear it but not to hide my injury.” Gareth guided the glove over his hand, feeling it stretch to accommodate the bandage around his lost finger. “Rather I will wear it to accentuate my battle scar as evidence of all I’ve survived while my enemies have died.”

“You’re your father’s son, Gareth of Naxen.” To King Jasson, this was the ultimate compliment because Father was one of his closest friends and most trusted commanders. “You turn your weakness into your strength as I told your father you would. Use your time in bed to invent an impressive story to scare others with your battle scar. I expect you to be training with your swrod again in no more than two days.” 

“Yes, sire.” Gareth’s eyes sank to his missing finger, wondering if he would ever be able to fence as well as he did in his dreams, but such a question would only be met with scorn from his knightmaster. Gareth would have to overcome the nightmares he found when he was awake alone as he fought to find peace with his battle scar.


End file.
